It's a form of freedom, don't have to schedule your life around a bus schedule. Though you could argue there's something beautiful about communal travel

That said, I live in California and AAA spends a fuck ton of money making sure anyone in political office makes no effort in funding or creating public transit. We as a nation have a corrupt system where politicians are for sale, and the people who can buy them want to ring every drop they can from the working class. There's no money in everyone having a bus pass, but there's a lot of money in everyone buying 20K+ car, and buying gas every week and insurance every month.

People who complain about the US mass transit system or lack thereof really don't understand the reasons it's totally impossible, at least as a replacement for cars. European countries are relatively small, with relatively dense population centers. Mass transit makes huge sense under those circumstances.You can't do that in the US. Most economic hubs are heavily dispersed in completely irregular networks that often cross vast tracts of pure emptiness. Mass transit becomes inherently less efficient the more surface area you are dealing with, and the US is on the other side of the point where efficiency gains from doing away with cars are less beneficial than the extreme logistical undertaking of converting the US to a mass transit system.

Besides, a car is an ideal from of transportation if it weren't for the fossil fuel aspect. People are, after all, all going to different places, so it makes sense to have a device which conveys each person to their individual destination rather than having to build society around hubs of transit. So, if there were no moral dimension to car usage, i.e. all cars were using alternative fuels, your rant against cars and Americans would be pretty much meaningless and arbitrary.

>>209227As technology marches forward, you Americans no longer need farms in the Midwest, but you can build technological indoor farms right in the middle of cities - where people actually live. No more truck caravans wasting time and fuel to transport food for hundreds of kilometers while spewing CO2 all over the place.

>>209225This is actually 100% untrue. Sweden is more sparsely-populated than the US. There are lots of large countries with transit systems, and the regions of the US are more than dense enough to support high-speed rail. The cities have been densifying for over 10 years as well and will continue to do so increasingly, according to commercial real estate market reports.

It’s sad how bad Americans’ understanding of transportation is. Quality of life could be a lot better and people could stop dying in car accidents.

>People are, after all, all going to different places, so it makes sense to have a device which conveys each person to their individual destination rather than having to build society around hubs of transit.

>> mass transit for the population centers, no mass transit for the flyover moo-cows

Well, I mean, that's pretty much what we have. Have you been to a 'population center'? Even the most car oriented ones (like LA) have mass transit systems that are perfectly fine and get a lot of use...perhaps not as much as they could have, but nothing is ever ideal. (LA is a good microcosm of the problem, because the reason mass transit is so inefficient there is because of how it developed over a large, spread out area, compared to much more concentrated cities like NY or SF)What are you actually suggesting we do? Put more funds into public transit? Make ad campaigns against car use? What?

Sorry for the double post, I didn't realize how many silly overblown comments had accumulated...>>209228

>>, but you can build technological indoor farms right in the middle of cities

I assume you are comparing the US to EU, if it some other place you're referring to then let me know, but, just so you know, if you bought it at a supermarket and didn't grow it at your self or from a local urban farmer, the food you eat was grown using largely traditional agricultural methods by someone who lives in a rural part of your or a neighboring country. Of the 48% of the EU that is classed as agricultural land, 59% is being employed for agricultural production, yet the EU still needs to import $126 billion of agricultural goods a year, according to the EC. So uh, how exactly is it that you get all your food from indoor farms again?

>>209229Sorry to have to break this down to basic mathematics, but your understanding of population density is flawed. There is a difference between land area per capita and population density. Simply put, Sweden has a very large area and a moderately high population, which is why it nets a low land area per capita figure which is what you are referencing. However population density actually refers to the average amount of space between each member of the population. Pic related, comparing the population density of the US and Sweden...keep in mind how few people live in the far north, whereas those vast open tracts of the US are economically viable and valuable (if not culturally, cause they're 'flyover cows' right?

I never said that. I said cars are an ideal form of transportation. I said that offering mass transit is harder than it sounds and the gains are worth less than you think under these particular circumstances. And I would consider a thread titled 'Americans hate everything beside cards' and claiming its because of some massive conspiracy to be ranting. It's at least unnecessarily dramatic.

You guys are acting like fucking elitist scum and it's obvious in how little you understand about how your own table gets bread on it or how your own country operates. We get it, you think you're superior because you're not American. How about actually having superior reasoning to demonstrate it?

>>209234I’m American though, and there wasn’t anything elitist in the OP. Also I didn’t see any reasoning in your posts. In fact you seemingly just discovered the idea of population density and are starting to realize population distribution is, but in that case it would really support the case for transit between cities like a high-speed rail system. Our cities are dense enough to support high-speed train travel between each other.

If you’re wondering about the cost, trains actually charge a toll so you recoup some of the costs, and the maintenance and building costs are way lower than highways. As a side bonus you get less people driving on the highways so t reduces highway maintenance costs too. Highways don’t charge any toll, they’re just a continual cost for the government. Nothing is more expensive than car infrastructure; all those highways, Parking lots, parking decks, $200k traffic lights, signs, police, fuel, insurance, it all incurs a giant cost to the public.

And actually you did act like we were advocating getting rid of cars, go reread your post.

>so it makes sense to have a device which conveys each person to their individual destination rather than having to build society around hubs of transit.

No one said anything about “having to build society around hubs of transit”. You can build wherever you want and travel however you want. Btw cars are only affordable because the govt spends so much to subsidize oil and keep gas affordable. Cars are the most expensive, dangerous, polluting, and noisy means of transport. I’m not saying get rid of them just offer something else.

Well, that would be grand. But we can't plan today's transportation policy based around a biotechnology that doesn't (quite) exist yet. Hope it goes that way though.>>209237You aren't the only person posting in the thread, which included at least four suggestions that rural people are worthless. That demonstrates that a lot of people don't understand how dependent their urban lifestyle still is on the rural laborer. We don't have robots picking our berries yet. Also that Americans are intrinsically intellectually inferior, but that's nothing new. It's coming from you too, like in your presumption, because I am talking about the concept of population density, that I have just discovered the concept of population density. I should assume that since you are talking about cars, you just discovered the concept of cars? Anyway, high-speed rail isn't that great, because of the distances involved, the costs compared to what you would ever recoup in passenger fees; it's a pretty hard sell. The existing passenger rail network hardly gets enough use to maintain its own existence from a profit perspective, so where would we possibly get enough tolls to even put a dent in the cost?

>> and the maintenance and building costs are way lower than highways.

For ordinary passenger rail, which we already have, yes. But for highspeed rail the estimated cost per mile is around 80 million, whereas highways cost at most 10 million a mile, including maintenance.

>>Highways don’t charge any toll, they’re just a continual cost for the government

That are paid for through taxes as public infrastructure, usually through gas taxes so the people using the service pay for it. There are, of course, actually tons of toll highways. If you're really interested in the costs of our transit system I would suggest analyzing it carefully in an itemized way as you will see that while far from perfect it's not as absurd as people are making it out to be. For the most part the solutions we have arrived at are reasonable and the costs of them are in range of what is acceptable.

>>And actually you did act like we were advocating getting rid of cars, go reread your post.

I did, several times. Not seeing it. I guess me saying cars are good must mean you think I think I'm taking some absolutist stance where ONLY cars are good. Oh wait, that's what you already assumed to be the case for ALL Americans in the OP; that they have some fanatical aversion to anything other than cars. Maybe you are reading your own biases into this conversation?

>>No one said anything about “having to build society around hubs of transit”.

If you build everything around vehicles that are tied to fixed routes (like trains) then all your societal services become more and more dependent on being close to the methods of transport. Which is fine for a place where everything important is concentrated anyway. However hyper urbanization and centralization have their own severe problems, which other forms of transportation mitigate.

>> Cars are the most expensive, dangerous, polluting, and noisy means of transport.

And back to my original post, the moral dimension of car use only applies to fossil-fuel burning cars. A fleet of all-alternative-fuel driverless cars would have most of the advantages of advanced mass transit systems, in addition to the benefits of traditional cars. And it would still be a 'car,' so you aren't really against cars, you're against fossil fuels and government subsidies. So say that instead.

>>209238Trust me, America’s in no danger of “hyperurbanization” and transit doesn’t preclude that. We’re super sprawled out, but we know what makes neighborhoods valuable, walkable and transit-friendly and it’s not over-densifying or being in cookie-cutter subdivisions.Yes, there are still big issues with cars being the only option even if they were running solely on electricity (which they won’t be for decades, if ever). You’re right I’m not anti-car. I’m anti-“cars only”. And the benefits of a high speed rail system FAR outweigh the immediate costs, especially in comparison to highways, if you do your research. Nothing’s more expensive to us than car infrastructure. I’m not the only one with this line of thought, there are a lot of businesspeople and experts who agree, but the problem in America is just conveying that to people. And even people who are normally intelligent become conspiracy theorists when you mention moving people in anything besides a car for some reason.

>>209239Ok, well then the onus is on you to convince people. I'm not convinced that high-speed rail could ever be cheaper than highway, even if you factor in additional aspects of car infrastructure (are you including fuel costs? Cause trains run on fossil fuels too...) The figures I gave in my previous post were the best information I could find on their respective costs. If you can show me some evidence that demonstrates that that's incorrect, I would be glad to be convinced otherwise.

Also, where do you get the idea that cars will never be fully electric? Don't you think we'll eventually run out of oil?

>>209240I don't think it's a wild idea really. The cost-efficient trains are diesel-electric which can run about 125mph. Fully electric trains are faster but they're more expensive and their lines require more maintenance.

I don't think ALL cars will go fully-electric any time soon because a hybrid drivetrain is a really damn good idea; that's why it's in higher-speed trains now that I think about it. At low speeds the electric motor has a ton of torque to take you from a stop, which is where most fuel gets spent in a heavy vehicle, so it saves a ton of fuel. At highway speeds the internal combustion goes solo but at high gears it's fuel-efficient. Ford's about to come out with a hybrid F-10 and hybrid Mustang which will both have tons of power and good fuel economy. But alone, the electric motor will only last for 40 miles or so and they take a huge heavy battery. Alone, the internal combustion engine has gaps in the power band and drinks a lot of fuel.

A company in Florida is building a private high-speed rail system (diesel-electric) around the southern part of the state for $3 billion. Ticket fares and increasing ridership over time mean they'll recoup their investment soon enough to justify it. That's a densely-populated region which is growing, but also becoming less and less car-dependent.

For the first time in America's history we're building more "multifamily" stuff and reviving our city centers, than "single-family" detached houses. Markets are just showing a preference for walkability and transit and kind of always have (ie a house with a high Walkscore is way more valuable). As we build denser in our cities, transit becomes more feasible which in turn encourages further dense development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit-oriented_development

A transit system is like a big network; if a city has a lot of non-car travel options around, it will support further non-car travel options to other cities, which then encourages mass transit in that city. Brightline is hoping to expand to other cities around the US, they just have to deal with a ton of red tape and random county governments trying to fight them. Same thing happened with a private rail company in Texas, they've had the money but people have held them up for years.

>>209238Actually there was a report on lab meat developed in the Netherlands on an actualities program. The scientist interviewed expects lab meat to compete with regular meat in what maybe 5 years? That is nothing mate. Farming is dead. Goddamn best day of my life.

Something tells me you're perception is just off. I get that middle America is legit the most vast and open place and overall it's most of America's population. The thing is, America is so huge say Arkansas or Missouri or Indiana is completely different from places like say California, New York, philly, Oregon, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Maine, Chicago, etc.

For instance, the coasts and cities people are more likely to be against organized religion, to be questionable of the economic values of America - shit most coastal cities will shun people for snitching meanwhile in middle America there's militias with blue lives matter logos. It's a complete clash of values. Small towns hate the big city and have been fed this idea of mass hordes of lazy criminals from the urban (of all colors) being the reasoning for them being broke. It's an age old capitalist mechanism of disconnecting the rural working class from the urban poor. Don't believe me I can pull up a Bakunin or Nietzsche quote from the 1800s describing how the rural peasants are lulled into ignorance by nationalism and religious values while the inner city poor are rebellious and prone to crime.

This is relevant because there is pretty widespread transit in all of these coastal densely popular areas. Anyone who thinks otherwise is confused because millions of people ride transit in nyc alone, even more in the entire north east. I've never heard anyone dog on mass transit in a city unless it was about fare hikes, labor disputes or inefficiency.

PS: this hatred towards cities isn't just opinion, it's actually structurally ingrained into things and racism plays a big part. For two instances Maryland underfunds Baltimore and Harrisburg PA does the same to Philly (America's biggest poor city). What makes it racial is as suburbs receive a higher population of mixed races, funding and resources drop (Ferguson).

Shit my dudes. This goes beyond transit. Things may seem calm, but its clear tension has been building up towards some sort of civil war involving this divide. These people not only believe in conspiracy against transit but believe in waging a war against thugs,liberals,socialists, atheists, scientists,antifa,queers, aka city minded folk.

And lol @ being so naive you think mass transit means people stop driving. I mean you keep bringing up accidents so on one hand you say you don't want people to lose the ability to drive but on the other you naively think people will stop if faster trains exist. Won't happen. Doesn't happen in Europe wont happen in America. Pic related.

I also feel like if you've been more places you wouldn't feel these ways. Europe isn't some utopia it's a hellhole that tries to mask the fact that their history is blood and conflict that temporarily pleased people with welfare ... It's now austerity and brexit mixed in with xenophobia and underground extremists.

Also not all traffic in USA is bumper to bumper. Ever drive thru Utah,wyoming,Kansas,Montana? Sometimes ID see like 5 cars on the road for over 30 miles. Seems like transit would be a bust.

>>209245There are so many strawmans in this post I’ve never seen anything like it. Nowhere does anyone say people are going to stop driving altogether. Nowhere does anyone say anything about Europe. Nowhere does anyone say all American traffic is bumper-to-bumper.

Americans have got to stop seeing transit discussion as an assault on their identity. And stop thinking “bringing transit here” = “turning us into Europe/japan/whatever strawman place I can come up with”

I think the heart of Anericans’ mistrust in cities comes from our development patterns and how we build suburban sprawl. But in the past decade that’s really been changing and Americans are embracing their cities and turning them totally around. So I think transit will come, but we’ll still need to educate people and convince the committed anti-transit types who don’t understand transportation and development issues.

Love how people 'debunk' me with statistics pullled out of their ass. Personal experience is where knowledge comes from, anybody can try to reduce things to a random number. My point about listing my driving experiences isnt isolated.. It's a reflection of reality. That reality being the midwest and West is vast wide open spaces with an array of towns that have developed along old industrial developments and.. Highway. There's a reason most of the railways there have to be split.. It's already dominated by freight lines which Europe barely has. Theres route s built for commerce alone.

You people are naive to think the rich will just restructure an entire landscape that has been built to maximize and instill their profit. You also act as if any European country is the size of Europe.

How many places have you lived?

And people's mistrust for the city is something I already explained. It comes from racial supremacist and bourgeise values being crammed down rural throats for over a century. Disconnecting the rural workers from the city is one of the oldest and most necessary mechanisms of capitalism.

And accidents don't come from too many people on the road. Europe's safer driving does not come from reduced driving. You also have no statistics to prove most people would stop driving for transit. It just so happens you much prefer it but that doesn't mean most people will or do. A lot of assumptions.

Europe has safer road conditions and a less distracted culture of consumers eating MacDonald and smoking camels watching buzzfeed driving with their knees.

So yeah. Consider that. This country was built around highway and freight and even CSX rail lines and public roads are falling apart.

America has a much more sinister problem behind there being "inefficient" transit.

Thirdly, Japan and Europe didn't get mass transit without a mass power vacuum being left open paving the way for a more social Democratic welfare state to develop around fresh infrastructure. You know ww2 happened. America didn't have to rebuild and reevualte because industrial centers and cities weren't being bombed.

Just consider it. A lot of Americans live in houses from 1920-1930-1940 even. In Europe those homes would likely have taken some heavy blows. That's on an individual persoanl property level. Now consider the results of a brutal industrial capitalist region tearing itself apart from the inside in a war of Nations ravaging each other's centers of commerce. Look at European history even in the 70s. If one rail accident happened in Italy workers (were) outside of that mayors house mob style.

>Love how people 'debunk' me with statistics pullled out of their ass.

And which ones would those be?

>Personal experience is where knowledge comes from, anybody can try to reduce things to a random number. My point about listing my driving experiences isnt isolated.. It's a reflection of reality.

In other words... You also have no statistics to prove that your personal driving experience is representative of the reality experienced by the average American. It just so happens you have experienced it but that doesn't mean most people will or do. A lot of assumptions.

>And accidents don't come from too many people on the road. Europe's safer driving does not come from reduced driving. You also have no statistics to prove most people would stop driving for transit. It just so happens you much prefer it but that doesn't mean most people will or do. A lot of assumptions.

Well, luckily for me... Personal experience is where knowledge comes from, anybody can try to reduce things to a random number. My point about listing my driving preferences isnt isolated.. It's a reflection of reality.

On a totally unrelated note, are you familiar with the phrase "talking out of both sides of one's mouth?" Just a random question that popped into my head suddenly, can't imagine what prompted it.

>>209250While I think this guy is going off the rails (har) on the whole racial supremacist angle, I will say that the basis for my initial objection about surface area was also based on this same kind of experience -- driving through the American frontier and seeing on a first-hand level how immensely vast and isolated it is, and putting that together with the fact that no one will ever, ever think about building a high-speed train to service some BFE in BFE, yet those people still need to get around and have services provided.

>>209258I’m not sure what your impression of high-speed rail is. But it’s only made for going from one densely-populated area to another. No high-speed rail advocate is pushing for lines through the middle of the frontier country, because super long distances are best for planes. But if you’re going from one large city in your state to another large city the next state over, it’s perfect for that. Don’t have to put hundreds of miles on your car and be preoccupied with driving, it’s really nice.

I’ll admit that before I rode HSR I always wondered what the fuss was about it; after that though I saw the impact it would have in America.

Saying 96% of Americans are from highly condensed areas. I say personal experience has a role in knowledge because it does. Doesn't mean statistics can't confirm. It just means you live and learn thru experience.

Here's my maps to back that.

Secondly America has a mass freight rail system that no other country has. Something that hauls billions off dollars of commerce isn't going to be torn up or restructured in any form or way unless it would mean maximizing profit.

If you think this is of no importance, there's such an extensive rail system in the USA that Amtrak shares the same freight lines. Amtrak goes down train lines that have hauled goods since the 1800s.

Seriously? People are so deluded that I'd basically be considered a conspiracy theorist for bringing up something that's been documented for years.

You seriously don't think racism has a role in any policy involving proper infrastructure? How have so many people in /PSS/ escaped actual science to believe this. It's almost like you believe Flint Michigan has clean drinking water.

If they build mass transit in the USA, it'll be when all of the poor residents are driven out of condensed areas by raising prices on everything. Its begun to happen already.

The amount of people below the poverty line in America's suburab sprawl has grown more rapidly and also, the amount of bilingual people in burbs. This means a lot of immigrants. Ferguson saw a shift in racial diversity and suddenly funding was gone and the town made their business extorting residents at gun point.

If you can't see the logic in what im saying, the forces behind transit and how every single point on this map is built to ensure profit than idk what's up.

I mentioned ww2 because, Europes wars and conflicts did not come out of nowhere. There were various conflicts in Europe. Many places in the region were having a hard time dealing with workers rebellions and revolutions as America murdered off their last dissident leaders. This lead to, more or less, the ruling parties of Europe engaging in a battle.. The cold war. They never wanted to face such strife, such loss of industry again. They adapted some socialist values out of a neccesity, even began letting socialists and social Democrats have some what of a say, no longer outlawing parties. This directly led to the carrot on the stick.. The welfare social democracy. Which means lots more funding for infrastructure that was already deteriorated,for services of public and worker welfare. Things we don't have in the USA (200 dollar ebt a month does not mean u in a welfare state). Sooo.. Ding ding. High speed rail.

>>209263No one’s ever going to drive ALL the poor people out of cities.

But you do make a good point about prices in cities going up; city centers have been getting trendier and honestly for good reason; they’re convenient, walkable, and with new development they get nicer.

Suburban sprawl has comparatively little to offer and I see “poor people moving out of cities into suburbs” as a really good thing honestly. It’s a market correction. It’ll bring home values down and make poor and rich people live in the same neighborhoods more often. That’s what America needs to increase mobility and reduce class division.

I also want to make the point that everyone in America needs to realize: mass transit raises property values. It’s a huge benefit to the poor, but the more you run it the nicer the area becomes so they move to the suburbs. Right-wingers should want all the mass transit possible because it saves the government money and it prices out the poor. Leftists should want mass transit because it helps the poor until the neighborhoood becomes so pricey they can’t live there anymore. But in the meantime they saved a lot of money and had good opportunity to advance in life.Environmentalists should want it because it uses less energy, and car-lovers should want it because it means less people driving.

This is how rich people talk about things like layoffs,eviction, private prisons, wage cuts, austerity.

>>divide of class will decrease if rich people are geographically close to the poor

There's a reason gated communities, security, homes that are isolated and guarded became a thing for rich people. Poor people were burglarizing them. Poor people even Rob each other you think a richbitch will live near the poor without the police becoming more high handed. How will that stop a divide? When a rich dude has a gun of a coked up stick up kid to his neck or when over a thousand homeless people get complained on an arrested en masse.

European cities aren't exactly dealing with rising costs and austerity.. They're rioting and radical communism and right wing movements are widespread than ever since the cold war.

>>209265Yeah you’re talking in hyperbole and don’t have a lot of knowledge of commercial real estate.

There are quite a lot of mixed-income communities even in the US. In fact living in a mixed-income place has become so desirable that within several years they become expensive places and the problem becomes staying affordable for the poor. Case in point: city areas which used to be poor and then get gentrified.Don’t hyperbolize the “market correction” either. It’s true, use your brain.

Suburbs are income-segregated places, largely created to separate whites from blacks. You shouldn’t complain that they’re becoming mixed-income and integrated. It is not anything like layoffs or private prisons, you’re being an assclown.

Where exactly are people coexisting? Maybe poor and middle income. Prisons and jails defenitely have something to do with what I'm talking about. With rich people, comes more policing against the "criminal neighborhoods". The poor usually don't buy into fear and hatred of crime.

Look at SF and Seattle, how they police the homeless. How they attack them and try to put them out of site. How old " drug areas " are now being swept to create a safe space for shoppers. It not so cocidedentally began to increase drastically when techies from the valley flocked.

There is a good result of suburbs becoming poor though. The police can't deal with organized crime and rebellion because they havent been fed the resources and training that cities have seen getting for 50 years. They don't have outlets or resources to calm them down like in the city.

Look at Ferguson. The police were so not used to a bunch of people losing their shit. They kicked a hornets nest and created a full scale rebellion. That would not happen in NYC because they have counter rebels in every community, spies, constant working with federal agencies and NGO liberals who will channel energy into their harmless organizing.

Idk why so many people call me a conspiracy theorist for talking about shit the department of defense admits. There's a direct relation to heavy policing and class. A neighborhood gets nicer "police step up security patrols". A suburb gets poorer, homeland security hands them militaristic gear to handle rebellious poor people in suburbs with less police than people.

And a lot of America was built to keep whites from blacks. In Chicago there's literally an old ass bridge built to purposely separate white from black back in the day. It would force the black hood to walk a really long time to get to the white area

Anyone I responded to you pissy but you seem to know what you're talking about more. I just thought you were the guy who thought I was going off the rails for saying a lack of infrastructure has some racism behind it.

>>209267People make mixed-income developments a lot man. We even have a program called Hope VI to build mixed-income places instead of poor projects.Mixed income, mixed-use, mixed transportation, is how you make healthy cities. The problem is, in America, these are rarities so they come at a premium, and the poor get priced out after several years. Hope VI has been very successful. I *personally* know real estate developers who would build mixed-income more if they could, but the cost of construction is prohibitive. Studies have shown you can make a new development 15% low-income units and it will not hurt the price of the high-income units.

In the old days we used to build a servant’s quarters in the backyard or something. But now suburbs have outlawed building additional dwelllings on the property, so the maids have to live somewhere else, buy a car, and drive in rush-hour traffic.

Honestly dude I’ve been to San Francisco several times and they’re really nice to the homeless. Like how are you going to use the most liberal city in the country as an example of mistreating the homeless.

When you get white people moving into poorer areas in the city, you get poor living with the wealthy. This should be what you want, since you’re complaining about segregation. But you’re also complaining about the rich moving into poor areas. You also talk about minorities moving to the ‘burbs and to me this is a good thing; they’re moving out of bad neighborhoods.

SF is nice to the homeless? I'm from the West coast. I was a homeless tweaker in SF and LA and generally all over California. I've talked to homeless people from more gritty cities in the East coast and said cops generally overlook them.

I've dealt with sweeps of parks, in which cops with flash lights wake up, harrass you, and cite you for sleeping in public. They have units meant to keep loiters out. They clear encampments at gun point. In Seattle they have anti homeless spikes on benches. I spent my time in and out of jail in SF.

Oakland is rough and the cops are dangerous but I wasnt stopped there as much. Being homeless in SF means being questioned and approached at least twice a day. When I first got evicted it wasn't like that but in the mid 2000s.

Why so many apologists for capitalism on a /PSS/. I don't want rich people moving next to poor people unless it means those poor people can have all their shit.

OK pinko criminal scum. You and your communist friends are greatly outnumbered in the USA and most of America wouldn't care if all commies got locked up. Speed induced paranoi about a capitalist police state useful idiot

>>209270You have veered way off-topic with your posts dude. You didn’t even try to keep it about transit. Transit accomplishes a great amount of social justice while spurring business development. It makes a lot of sense which is probably why it’s so controversial in America.

Ever find it ironic that "anarchists" cough cough just commies conning idiots are Europe's biggest national security threat second to only Islam. It's almost like they're in bed together and their open borders nonsense is a way to destroy Europe.

Think about it. These people always wanted European nations to fail. In Spain they hailed "death to God and the nation" and Franco heroicially put them in their places.

I hope non-Americans can see the situation in this thread here perfectly.

A simple discussion of transit modes besides the car devolves QUICKLY into conspiracy theories of communism vs. capitalism, neither of which have to do with transit. Now you know why American infrastructure is stuck in 1950.

I think american cities grew with cars mostly, so they are good for cars. big asian or euro cities were built with horses and bicycles and shit. so they're more compact as a foundation. that's why mass transit works in those places.

Trains got fucked. Niggas had to build tracks, and cars, and pay for police, insurance, and medical niggas, and everything else. With cars, we pay for the cars, and we pay for the roads, we pay for the insurance, and we pay for the police and EMTs, and then we pay for the roads again via toll booths. That's what allowed cars to overtake trains. Come visit us on /his/ some time for more exciting discussion.

OP i'm gonna be honest here- you must either be just a dink. a big ol' dink. or you're not actually from the United States nor have you ever been here. 325 million people we're talking about- if you're talking about intra-state? sure, there's actually plenty of mass transits available in densely populated centers.... if you're talking about interstate travel. no you're being stupid. the only think that's basically cost effective, on the ground, is trains, and even those are being used less and less versus air travel.

The United States isn't Europe we can't just string trolleys everywhere and expect to cover the millions of square miles of open space whereas some European countries are so minuscule that they might as well be carpeted

We'd probably still be using trains if the auto industry didn't leverage tax dollars against them. With trains, the train folk pay for the trains, the tracks, the fuel, the insurance, the policing, the repairs and upkeep.

With automobiles, we pay for the cars, the roads, the police, the insurance, the fuel, and then extra shit through toll booths and tax subsidies.

>>209225This ignores the fact that other countries with dense population centers surrounded by endless tracts of nothing have far better mass transit systems than America (Russia) despite being economically crippled in every other aspect of the word. There's no reason or rationale for it other than simple American stubbornness, stubbornness that starts to look really stupid now that the infrastructure itself is crumbling to the tune of trillions due to all the morons on the road with cars because they've been lead to believe any other solution is impossible.

Why do you want endless troves of morons on the roads? Any true automotive enthusiast would be pushing tooth and nail for mass transit because it takes those morons off the road and frees up the highways to actually use their top speed. All your stated freedoms of automotive transport are completely negated when you consider the crumbling, expensive to repair infrastructure and the endless troves of morons swerving into you, tailgating, and gridlocking the entire network into absurdity.

Amtrak is a pathetic uncompetitive mess and it's obvious you haven't done an iota of research into its inner workings.

>A fleet of all-alternative-fuel driverless cars would have most of the advantages of advanced mass transit systems, in addition to the benefits of traditional cars. And it would still be a 'car,' so you aren't really against cars, you're against fossil fuels and government subsidies. So say that instead.

Flex fuels are a pipe dream, the hydrogen fuel cell is equally a pipe dream, and your muh Tesla still drains electricity from a national grid powered by fossil fuels. You haven't fixed shit with this shit solution, and gridlock + the cost of individually manufacturing each and every car for each and every moron to not drive + the computers required to get these morons to their destination + the fact that America is not a nation that instantly transitions to the newest and greatest solution in the first place renders your solution inept. There's still trucks from the 40s on these roads if you're not stuck in the East where road salt eats away at everything. No politician on Earth is going to ban older cars either, which means every time you slip into your automated Tesla you're going to worry your dear heart about the 86yo in his beat-up Ford. Couple that with the fact that gridlock by itself is an economic drain to the nation through lost work hours and it sounds like you really don't care about what's beneficial for the economy at all.

You're not pro-freedom, you're pro-fanciful solutions built on pie in the sky technologies that aren't even here yet and will cost far more than even high-speed rail, much less the pathetic implementation of passenger rail that exists now. Say that instead.